


a gentle death

by Saengak



Series: GilHanne collection [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, F/M, Guilt, M/M, Marriage, guilty gilbert, pining hanneman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23127919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saengak/pseuds/Saengak
Summary: Gilbert invites his wife back to Garreg Mach in order to make amends. Meanwhile, Hanneman falls heartsick.
Relationships: Gilbert Pronislav/Gilbert's wife, Hanneman von Essar/Gilbert Pronislav
Series: GilHanne collection [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1787005
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	a gentle death

**Author's Note:**

> Yes I ship these two old men. Let them be happy, please! But before that, here's how Gilbert may have reconciled with his wife and ended his spiral of guilt.

“You’ve been standing at my doorway for hours, Gilbert,” Hanneman says lightly as he puts down his piece of chalk and turns away from the blackboard. Patting off the dust on his hands, he gives the man a warm smile. “Should I ask the kitchen staff for some tea?” The solemn look of intent on Gilbert’s face makes Hanneman wonder, but Gilbert shakes his head.

“I have invited my wife to Garreg Mach,” he says without preamble. “She will arrive by tomorrow.”

Ah.

“That’s wonderful,” he replies faintly. Even though he means it with all his heart, the words sound empty to his ears. Part of him has retreated into the back of his mind, nursing another wound, hurting even though it’s as good as self-inflicted. He strengthens his voice. “It’s about time you reconciled with your family. I’ve always said, haven’t I?”

“Hanneman.” Gilbert says his name on a whisper of a breath, voice steeped in the same old apology and regret that always lingers in those ashen tones, and Hanneman cannot bear it. “I will be returning to the Kingdom with her.”

The professor turns his back, his unfocused gaze finding the one comfort that he had always poured his regrets unto. Gilbert may not be able to make sense of the hasty scribbles on the board, but to Hanneman, it’s clear as day. He’s close to the end of his life’s work—just another fortnight is enough. But now he does not even have the heart to look at it properly.

“You wouldn’t be the man I know if you decided in any way otherwise. It is the right thing to do. Annette would be overjoyed.”

“She has told me as much in her letters.”

 _‘Then why are you here?’_ Hanneman thinks in despair. The words on the board blur and his fingers curl into his palm, nails biting into flesh. _‘Do you want me to stop you? To beg you to stay?’_

“Go do your duty,” he croaks, closing his eyes. “Go.”

It might just be his imagination, but the sounds of Gilbert’s approaching footsteps are clear in his mind. His nape prickles at the warmth of his presence; his breath stutters. It’s about as close they’ve come to touching each other, aside from the rough, impersonal contact that fighting in a war brings.

Hanneman hunches into himself. He can’t bear this, not now.

Nothing was ever started but everything is at an end all the same. He is truly a selfish, covetous man. “Go,” he whispers again, and Gilbert leaves.

* * *

It has been nearly a decade since Gilbert had seen his wife last, but when the sunlight scatters around her head, it still lights up her coiffed hair in a golden halo. Gilbert is grateful for the strictures of propriety when he finds himself near mute from fear and guilt just at the sight of her. “My lady,” he murmurs, holding out his hand to help her dismount from her horse.

She says nothing as she sets her gloved hand in his, light as a feather, and slips off the horse without leaning on his offered hand. It’s a mere touch between two layers of leather and cloth before she’s gone, patting down her skirts as she eyes him with a sombre green gaze. She has aged, just as he has, but she holds herself proud and upright.

“Gustave,” she says softly. “Thank you for inviting me.”

He should be used to this twisting sensation in his stomach. “I should have done so years ago. I… I do not deserve your forgiveness.”

She steps towards him, her brow creasing, and for a moment Gilbert almost expects to feel the sting of her hand on his cheek, but she merely settles her hand in the crook of his arm. “Let’s speak of this in your rooms.”

With a nod at the knight who had accompanied her on the journey, she pulls Gilbert along.

* * *

It feels strange to have her tucked by his side again, her head barely reaching his shoulder as she greets the staff with a charming smile.

“Professor Hanneman!” she calls out when they bump into him on the way to Gilbert’s rooms. Gilbert is surprised that she recognises him on sight but she is already holding out a hand. “What an honour.”

 _‘Another sin to confess,’_ Gilbert muses uneasily as he watches Hanneman drop a kiss just above her knuckles.

“Lady Estia,” Hanneman says gallantly, no hint of unhappiness on his face. He was a noble too, Gilbert remembers, and surely well-trained in his manners, but Gilbert has looked into those eyes often enough to recognise the soft sincerity in them. “What a pleasure. Annette looks just like you.”

“Is that so?” she laughs, her hand tugging Gilbert even closer. “Though she certainly has Gustave’s eyes and colouring.” Hanneman’s brow creases in confusion for a second before it’s gone but Estia has always been sharp. “Oh dear. I’m sorry. I meant Gilbert. Everyone in the Kingdom still calls him Gustave.”

Hanneman smile turns awkward. It’s clear that he’s avoiding Gilbert’s apologetic gaze. “Is that so?”

The conversation quickly turns towards Annette, a safe ground for all of them. “A brilliant young lady,” Hanneman declares, “and a true asset in the war, my lady, you should be proud.”

“I truly am,” she replies softly, her eyes shimmering, “but she wouldn’t have come so far without your guidance. She mentions you often, professor. I must thank you for all you’ve done, and for keeping both Annette and Gilbert safe.”

“Annette’s achievements are all hers,” Hanneman says firmly. “And she has saved all of us quite a few times as well.”

His eyes, still crinkled in a smile, accidentally flicker towards Gilbert out of habit. It’s a private joke, or a commiseration of pain, and he can almost see the bloodstained memories replaying behind those grey-blue irises. They’d fought side-by-side in the war, saving each other more times than either of them could count. Bleeding and staining their hands with blood, all to live another day together…

Hanneman averts his gaze quickly. At the very next lull in the conversation, he politely excuses himself.

* * *

Even pleasantries can be tiresome but it’s the distance between them that’s all the more wearying. Gilbert closes the door behind them and leans on it for strength as his wife glances about, taking in the sunken bed, the grey stone walls, and the axe leaning in the corner together with his lance. She traces her fingers over the table by the side of the room and takes a seat in one of the chairs tucked underneath it.

“This is nice,” she murmurs, her gaze lingering on the bright patch of sky outside the window before she turns to chide him. “Gustave, don’t just stand there.”

“My apologies,” he says automatically. He approaches, weighing the heaviness of his heart as he considers the seat. He ends up on a knee instead, his hands reaching out to take hers between his own. “Estia,” he begins, but she’s pulling him up, her delicate fingers squeezed tight around his knuckles.

“This is unnecessary.” The troubled pinch of her brow stops Gilbert from protesting. “I’ve read the letters you’d given to Annette, not to mention the one you sent in order to invite me here. You’ve apologised profusely enough.”

He takes a seat reluctantly and she draws a deep breath, her chest heaving beneath the ribbons trailing from her cloak. Perhaps she’d prepared a speech, just as he had, but it all comes out in a shuddering sigh.

“Are you serious about coming back to the Kingdom? About coming home?”

“Of course,” Gilbert promises solemnly. “I won’t ask your forgiveness for I do not deserve it, but if you will have me, I will make amends to you and Annette. I’ll stay by your side from now on.”

Her lips curve in a mirthless smile. “To do what?”

“Anything you’d like me to.”

“I don’t need you, Gustave. Not anymore.”

Her words cut deeper than Gilbert could have imagined; he finds himself frozen in shock, or perhaps fear, but she stares at him steadily. Despair is the only label he can put to the coldness that washes over him, his only path towards atonement disappearing forever, but ah— This is what he deserves.

He had made it clear that he hadn’t needed her. Neither she nor Annette had been enough of a reason to stay. Why should he be able to atone, when they had to suffer for all these years? She is right to hate him.

“All these years I have been raising Annette alone,” she muses, tangling her hands in her lap. “I spent years waiting for you, and in darker times, I waited for news of your death. But here I am, still whole and alive.” She twists her ring slowly around her finger and Gilbert can’t look away from the jewelled glint.

She’s still wearing it. Somehow, it hurts more to see it than if she’d thrown it away.

“You were a knight to your King and now you are a servant to your Goddess. I am just a woman. I should have known better than to expect you to stay.”

“But I should have,” Gilbert breathes heavily. “You’re right, Estia, there is no way I can atone for what I’ve done. Failing you so utterly…” He begins to stand, his back bending in a bow. “I should leave. I must be an eyesore for you—”

“ _Gustave,_ ” she sighs. “Sit. You misunderstand me. After the Tragedy, I’d guessed at your sorrows. My suppositions were only confirmed when your brother told me that his informants had found you here, in Garreg Mach. Did you think that Annette’s presence here was truly that much of a coincidence? I had hoped that the both of you, at least, would be able to reconcile. You will always be her father.”

Gustave sits again with an aching heart and she continues.

“I don’t need your atonement, only your sincerity. Annette is grown, almost to be married, and I have accepted my lot in life. You’ve changed, Gustave, and so have I. Sometimes I reminiscence the heady days of our youth, but those days are gone. What am I to do with you, with _us?_ Am I to order you about so I can vent my sorrows and you can serve your penance? In what ways shall I mistreat you? Every day we see each other, we will be reminded of our pain.” Her green eyes are deep pools of sorrow. “That is no marriage.”

The ring slips off her finger with a gentle twist. Taking his hand, she sets it in his palm with a faint smile.

“I forgive you,” she whispers, and a glimmering tear falls from her eye. “It’s time to set the both of us free.”

She closes his numbed fingers over the ring, squeezing tight with her own hands over his, and he bows his head with a shuddering, tear-choked gasp. He had not known that it would be so painful to feel his soul tear away from the shackles of guilt.

His relief feels like a second betrayal. Despite the gentle death she’d given to their relationship, it feels like he’s failed her all over again. Bowing his head, he sets his forehead against their clasped hands, mouthing another silent apology.

“I forgive you, Gustave.”

* * *

The first rays of dawn find Hanneman still in his office, days after his last conversation with Gilbert. He has hardly left except to eat and bathe. Dragging a hand through his unkempt hair, Hanneman messes it up further as he scribbles furiously on a piece of parchment. There is no time to waste. The professor mutters to himself, untangling the numbers and symbols into lines of formula that spit themselves from the tip of his quill. The ache in his eyes and the exhaustion in his bones is nothing compared to the discovery that is at the very tip of his fingers.

“Hanneman!” Manuela shouts as she slams open his office door. “What are you doing here?”

The nib skids across the page—an ugly, jagged line. Groaning, Hanneman takes a moment to affix his thoughts in his memory before lifting his head. “I’m busy, Manuela.”

She tuts. “Aren’t you going to see Gilbert? They’re supposed to leave for the Kingdom today.”

He’d almost forgotten.

No, what kind of lie is that? He hasn’t forgotten—he has lived in dread of this very moment for the past few days. When his mind is not occupied with the familiar shapes of his research, his thoughts stray incessantly to that man.

“I’m not sure that’s necessary,” Hanneman replies, carefully hiding his anguish beneath a brisk tone. Yet, something must have shown on his face; he’d never been good at hiding his emotions.

Manuela’s voice softens. “I’m sure he has something to say to you,” she says meaningfully.

Hanneman is so very tempted to go but he has resolved to stay in his office. There is nothing more that they can say to each other without dragging up more regrets. He’d seen Gilbert bring his wife around Garreg Mach, arm in arm like a pair of lovers as they whisper in the gardens, and he refuses to sour their healing relationship with his presence. They deserve better than that.

There is no longer any place for him in Gilbert’s life but there is yet much work to be done. Setting his quill on paper again, Hanneman begins writing again, slowly. “Thank you, Manuela. But we’ve already said our farewells.”

“If you say so,” she says doubtfully, but she leaves him in peace.

The door clicks behind her and Hanneman’s quill slows to a stop again. He has lost his train of thought. Biting his lip in exasperation, Hanneman looks through the parchment again. The symbols dance before his eyes, blurring and doubling.

Brushing aside the piece of parchment, Hanneman lets his head thump onto the table. He could use a few good hours of sleep and a warm meal, but the queasy feeling deep in the pit of his stomach would not stop tormenting him.

If this is heartsickness, then he must be in critical condition. Perhaps he really should go see Gilbert one more time, if only from afar.

Hanneman closes his eyes and counts his heartbeats. _‘If you love him, let him go,’_ he tells himself. What Gilbert needs is absolution from his past and that is the one thing that Hanneman cannot give him.

There’s another knock on his door. “I’m busy,” Hanneman mutters, but he lifts his head and rubs away the sore spot on his forehead. Picking up his pen, he pretends he’s not falling apart. It might be a student after all. “Come in.”

His eyes snap wide upon at the sight of Gilbert. “Why—? Aren’t you—? What? Manuela said!”

The corner of the knight’s mouth lifts slightly and Hanneman almost pinches himself. “I have something to tell you, and no, I haven’t told anyone yet,” Gilbert says lowly as he rounds the table and approaches Hanneman. The smile fades away as he speaks but his eyes are fixed intensely on the professor’s. “My wife and I have decided to separate. We’ve been apart for too long for things to be the same.”

Brilliant as he may be, even Hanneman has his moments when the cogs of his brain refuse to turn. “What does that mean?”

“This may be a little strange to hear,” the knight murmurs as he lifts his hand and touches Hanneman’s cheek. The gloved fingers travel down his jawline, a whisper of a touch, and the professor’s throat bobs. “But Estia has graciously given me permission to pursue you. Will you allow me this foolish knight another chance?”

His heart is far too stubbornly lodged in his throat for him to reply, but Gilbert sees his answer clear in his eyes.

_‘Yes.’_

All he can see is Gilbert’s smile as he leans down. His world narrows down to the press of the knight’s lips against his own, soft and warm.

_‘Of course.’_

His arms come around Gilbert’s broad shoulders and drag him down; his fingers dig into his back in his desperation to assure himself that Gilbert is truly staying _._

_‘I need every part of you.’_

* * *

**_Several days earlier…_ **

“That man. You love him, do you not?”

Gilbert’s heart leaps to his throat as he flinches away from her in guilt, but her voice holds no accusation, only curiousity.

“No matter, Gustave,” she soothes, sitting back against the bench that they’d chosen in the gardens. They had both craved a breath of fresh air after that conversation in his rooms. “You need not answer if you don’t wish to.”

She is more than he deserves, Gilbert thinks once again. Such an amorphous matter as love… For many years he’d thought himself no longer capable of it—perhaps he’d never been capable of love, if he was so fickle a man to be able to abandon his family. But Hanneman had proven him wrong simply by extending a hand of friendship to a drowning man. Gilbert had struggled long and hard against that realisation, spending nights upon nights on his knees praying, but the truth remains the same. He can do no more to wipe the professor from his thoughts than he can turn back time. From the very first conversation they’d had, Gilbert had laid his heart upon the knife’s edge of longing.

It would be a relief to be able to admit it to her and receive her judgment once and for all. He swallows and unsticks his tongue. “I do,” he confesses, and she smiles with a hint of melancholy.

“He seems to be a kind man,” she observes sincerely. “He did not begrudge you for returning to me?”

“You saw for yourself. He is an honourable man.”

“So I did.” A contemplative look comes over her face as she leans her slight weight against him. “I think… I can forgive him for loving you, if only for that. Gustave, I shall not begrudge you for romancing him.”

“Estia?” Gilbert splutters.

“He is your love, is he not? You can hardly take your eyes off him.” Her warm hand slides onto his knee, anchoring him in the whirlwind of his shock, but it is a struggle to reconcile her easy acceptance with the guilt that has plagued him for years. “Gustave, you should not think too much. You condemn yourself to much heartache this way. If I have already forgiven you, then you must forgive yourself.”

“Are you not angry?” he asks in a whisper. “I assure you, I have never touched him, but…”

“Perhaps my younger self would have felt slighted. But… we both pitiful enough without making each other even more miserable. I have long resolved to let you go.” She taps her chin with a finger, her face turning towards the sky. “We should wait, however, until Annette is married before letting her know of our decision. Weddings are complicated enough that we should avoid as much awkwardness as we can, yes?”

“Agreed…” He is still numb from shock. He can only hope that Annette will take the news well, afterwards. She has been waiting for them to reconcile for so long.

“Don’t disappoint him,” Estia warns, giving him a stern look. “Or you’ll have to contend with both of us.”

Gilbert shakes his head solemnly. “I won’t.”


End file.
